This Sunday, US President Joe Biden urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a telephone conversation to comply with International Humanitarian Law within the framework of the military offensive against the Gaza Strip.

“The president has reiterated that Israel has every right and responsibility to defend its citizens from terrorism and has stressed the need to do so in a manner consistent with International Humanitarian Law that prioritizes the protection of civilians,” the White House reported. it's a statement.

This is the first time that Biden has so openly defended the need for Israel to respect International Humanitarian Law since the start of retaliatory military operations launched in the Gaza Strip in response to attacks by Hamas militias against Israeli territory in the past. October 7.

“The president has highlighted the need to immediately and significantly increase humanitarian aid to meet the needs of Gaza civilians,” Washington stressed.

The conversation also discussed “the ongoing efforts to locate and secure the release of the hostages” and the American citizens who remain missing and could be held hostage by Hamas.

Israel continues to expand its land, sea and air incursion into Gaza as part of the “new phase” of the war against the Islamist group Hamas that began this weekend. The bombings on the Strip have been the most intense in memory since the outbreak of the conflict on October 7. In parallel, the Israeli Army sent more troops to Gaza this Sunday to “expand ground activity” in the Palestinian enclave.

“Ground fighting in the northern Gaza Strip continues, we are advancing the stages of the war according to the plan, we are gradually expanding ground activity and the reach of our forces. Activity from the ground is complex and also includes risks for our forces,” said Army spokesman Daniel Hagari.

Over the past day, Israeli troops attacked more than 450 Hamas military targets in different parts of Gaza. Among the bombed targets, according to the Army, were barracks of the Palestinian group, as well as observation posts and anti-tank firing positions of the Islamists.

Likewise, Israeli forces have dropped leaflets from the air over Gaza in which they have urged Hamas militants to surrender before the entry of their troops. “Hamas leaders are exploiting you. They and their families are in safe places while you will die in vain,” you can read in these messages.

The ballots indicate that, to surrender, combatants must abandon their military equipment, raise their hands and, if they can, wave a white paper. “Hamas leaders started a lost war,” they say. Those who want to surrender, the message adds, must follow the instructions of the Israeli soldiers and must not bring with them water or food, which will be provided by the Army.

For its part, the Ministry of Health of the Gaza Strip reported this Sunday “hundreds” of deaths in the last day as a result of the Israeli offensive.. “The magnitude of the massacres committed by the Israeli occupation is unprecedented and has left hundreds of martyrs and wounded,” said the ministerial spokesperson, Ashraf al Qudra, through social networks.

After 22 days of war, Israel's continued bombing of Gaza has already left 8,005 Palestinians dead, according to the latest count by the Gaza Ministry of Health.. 40% of these fatalities (3,342) are children and adolescents, a figure “greater than the number of minors who died in armed conflicts around the world in the course of a year” in twenty countries, reported the NGO Save the Children.

Looting of UN warehouses

Under a scenario of constant bombings, the situation of the Gazan population reached a new level of desperation this weekend never seen before.. Thousands of people broke into the warehouses and distribution centers that the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has in the Strip to obtain wheat flour and other “survival” items such as hygiene kits, a “worrying sign.” that civic order is beginning to break down,” UNRWA Affairs Director in Gaza, Thomas White, warned this Sunday.

One of the looted warehouses, in Deir al Balá, served as accommodation for the limited humanitarian aid that arrived from Egypt in recent days.. “People are terrified, frustrated and desperate. Tension and fear worsen due to cuts in telephone and internet lines. “They believe they have been abandoned to their fate,” lamented the spokesperson.

The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, also spoke of desperation this Sunday, assuring that “the situation in Gaza becomes more desperate with every passing hour.”. “I regret that instead of a critically necessary humanitarian pause, supported by the international community, Israel has intensified its military operations,” he said.

After a day and a half without internet or telephone service—vital to know where attacks are taking place, call rescue services or stay in contact with relatives in other parts of the enclave—connections were reestablished early on Sunday.

The limited humanitarian aid, paralyzed on Saturday, also resumed with the arrival of a total of 24 trucks loaded with food, water and medical supplies through the Egyptian Rafah crossing, which represents the largest convoy of this type to enter the Palestinian enclave since Israel allowed its controlled access last week.

Bombings next to a hospital

Israel's ultimatums to the population of the north and center of the Strip have once again caused tensions this Sunday after the order for the immediate evacuation of the Gazan Al Quds hospital, a notice seen as a “threat” to the Palestinian Red Crescent and which It has also been condemned by the World Health Organization (WHO). “We reiterate that it is impossible to evacuate hospitals full of patients without endangering their lives,” said the organization's director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Despite this, the area around the hospital was bombed this Sunday, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.. “They are deliberately and constantly launching rockets near the hospital to force staff, displaced people and patients to evacuate,” they said.

For the United Nations, population displacements represent a violation of International Humanitarian Law. However, Israel defends that it is under these hospitals that Hamas hides: “They use people as human shields and hospitals as headquarters and fuel depots,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday.

A gendarme has murdered his three minor daughters and subsequently committed suicide, in an event that has shocked France, reports Le Parisien.

According to this medium, this is an agent assigned to the air transport brigade (BGTA). The events occurred in the town of Vémars (Val-d'Oise), and apparently, the man was in the process of divorcing.

The police officer killed his three daughters, born in 2013, 2016 and 2018, the Pontoise prosecutor's office stated, in “a complicated family context.”

The bodies were found by two fellow gendarmes. The mother of the three girls, in a state of shock, was treated by emergency services, said the prosecutor's office, which did not specify whether she was at home.

We did not expect such a tragedy, especially in a small and quiet town like Vémars

The investigation was entrusted to the Versailles investigation section and the air transport investigation section.

The man lived in one of the buildings in a newly built neighborhood, located a little away from the center of this small city of 2,300 inhabitants, 12 kilometers north of the Roissy-Charles-De-Gaulle airport.

The neighborhood is made up of houses and apartments where many gendarmes live with their families, according to neighbors. In any case, this Sunday afternoon the police closed it completely, preventing access to people outside the homes.

“We did not expect such a tragedy, especially in a small, quiet town like Vémars,” said a neighbor in statements reported by Le Parisien.

The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, expressed his concern this Sunday about the alleged evacuation order of a Gaza hospital issued by Israel, and stated that it will be impossible for it to be carried out without endangering the lives of patients.

In a message on his official

“We reiterate that it is impossible to evacuate hospitals full of patients without endangering their lives,” said the general director.

The Red Crescent explained on social media that Israel has threatened to bomb Al Quds Hospital, located in the north of Gaza and in the strip's capital of the same name, and has already hit the surrounding areas.

In another message also published this Sunday, Tedros reported that they have been able to regain contact with WHO workers inside Gaza, after the resumption of telecommunications in the strip that had been cut off for more than 24 hours by order of Israel.

The head of the WHO insisted that Gazan hospitals remain in overcrowded conditions, and more medical supplies are needed.

“We call once again for a humanitarian ceasefire to be initiated, and health facilities and their workers to be protected,” added the Ethiopian.

The battle for the strategic town of Avdivka, besieged by Russian forces, has already become the “biggest defeat” for Moscow in terms of the number of casualties in a short period of time, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Army said this Sunday.

In televised statements, the spokesman for the Defense Forces of the Taurida region, Oleksandr Shtupun, stated this Sunday that Russian casualties since the start of the offensive on October 10 already amount to 6,500 troops in the area of responsibility of his group. of troops.

“If we talk about casualties in such a short period in a relatively small section of the front, then Avdivka is already the biggest defeat of the Russian Army,” he declared.

Since the beginning of the offensive on Avdivka, a hundred tanks and approximately 250 armored vehicles have also been destroyed, Shtupun said, according to which some 40,000 Russian troops are concentrated in the area.

The Ukrainian General Staff reported this Sunday on 15 enemy attacks repelled in the last 24 hours against the key town for the control of southern Donbas.

The fighting is fierce for control of the industrial zones in the north and south of the city, where there is a coke plant and a quarry, respectively.

The president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, warned this Sunday that Israel's “crimes” in the Gaza Strip could force “the whole world to act”, in a notice from the Islamic Republic to stop hostilities.

“The crimes of the Zionist regime have crossed all red lines, which can force the entire world to act,” the president said on the social network X (formerly Twitter).

Raisí indicated that Washington has asked Tehran to “do nothing,” but continues to support Israel, which has caused more than 7,300 deaths and almost 19,000 injuries in its bombings against Gaza.

“The United States sends messages to the Axis of Resistance but receives a response on the battlefield,” he stated.

In recent days there have been at least 20 drone attacks by pro-Iran militias against US bases in Iraq and Syria, in which 21 soldiers have been lightly injured.

The United States has responded with two attacks against facilities linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria.

Iran will respond to any threat

Iran has repeatedly threatened that the conflict could spread across the region if the Israeli state continues its attacks on Gaza, which began after the Islamist group Hamas carried out a surprise attack on the Jewish state on October 7. which caused 1,400 deaths and in which 200 Israelis were kidnapped.

The Iranian Army warned this Saturday that it has “its finger on the trigger” to respond to any threat, during massive military maneuvers to improve deterrence capacity against new threats with armored vehicles, artillery, missiles, helicopters and drones. .

The Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel are bitter enemies, they pose a mutual existential threat, compete for regional hegemony and maintain a covert war with cyberattacks, assassinations and sabotage.

Tehran leads a markedly anti-Israel informal coalition known as the Axis of Resistance, which also includes Hamas, the Lebanese group Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, in addition to other Palestinian, Iraqi and Yemeni militias.

Israel's Communications Minister, Shlomo Karhi, has responded to tycoon Elon Musk after he stated that his Starlink satellite communication system “will assist in connecting aid NGOs recognized by the international community” and has warned him that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) is going to use it for “terrorist activities.”

“Israel will use all means at its disposal to fight this. Hamas is going to use it for terrorist activities. There is no doubt, we know it, Musk knows it. Hamas is ISIS,” Karhi said, as reported by Haaretz.

He added that “perhaps Musk would be willing to condition it with the release of our kidnapped babies, sons, daughters and elderly people.”. All of them! By then, my office will sever any ties with Starlink.”

Musk has responded that “we are not that innocent” and added that “since its publication, no Starlink terminal has attempted to connect from Gaza. “If one does, we will take extraordinary measures to confirm that it is only used for humanitarian reasons.”

“We will carry out a security check with the governments of the United States and Israel before turning on a single terminal,” the businessman concluded.

It can mutate easily (pathogenic), it is highly virulent, it could be transmitted from animals to humans (zoonotic) and now Europe and Africa have become two of its epicenters, where new strains are being created. Avian influenza (H5N1), which was identified in China in 1996, has caused, until 2022 and according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), the death or slaughter of 131 million domestic poultry.. But it has not been the only species affected. Until now and according to data from the Ministry of Health, there have been 868 isolated infections in humans worldwide.. Some marine mammals, cats, ferrets or minks have also suffered from this type of influenza, one of the most important for public health due to its pandemic potential.

A study published on the 18th by the journal Nature, in which centers from China, Egypt, France, Australia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States participated, confirms that wild birds and their migrations have played a fundamental role in the expansion of the bird flu virus beyond Asia and that, in this global expansion, the disease has undergone mutations giving rise to new types born in these territories.

“Since 2020, there have been genetic changes in the virus, which has caused it to spread much more, reaching other continents,” says Aitor Nogales, virologist at the Animal Health Research Center (CISA, INIA-CSIC).. “The virus has been mutating and one of these subtypes has had more advantage because it has been transmitted quickly and in many places,” adds the expert and recalls that the disease “has had something to do with the last four flu pandemics in history.”. “It is one of the most segmented viruses.”. This means that it joins with other flus to form, for example, the well-known swine flu or also the Spanish flu, which killed more than 40 million people worldwide between 1918 and 1920.

The scientific community is concerned that “bird flu seeks an adaptation that allows it to be transmitted between mammals”

In this sense, Julio Álvarez, researcher at VISAVET, veterinary faculty of the Complutense University of Madrid, points out that, given the establishment of the pathology in Europe, since it previously appeared seasonally, the scientific community is concerned that “the “bird flu looks for an adaptation that allows it to be transmitted between mammals” and, therefore, reaches humans. “In the last four years, a considerable number of cases have been described in this type of animal, something relatively unusual,” says Álvarez.

Specifically, the last outbreak occurred this past July in Poland, when dozens of cats died from the virus.. “It is an issue to monitor because the more cases we have in mammals, the more likely it is that the virus will end up adapting and that it will be transmitted more easily.. It would be a very important change,” says Álvarez. The researcher does not rule out transmission in people and supports Nogales' statements: “This flu is what has been behind the great pandemics in history.”

In reference to a global epidemic, the two experts emphasize the great surveillance that exists around the disease, both at a European and global level, but they do not rule out the possibility of a pandemic and ask the same question: “When?”. “There is no need to be excessively alarmed, it is not like the coronavirus. So far, there has not been a sustained appearance of the virus in mammals,” explains Álvarez.

“We know it will probably happen, but we don't know when, where, or how it will be”

“We know it can occur like many other airborne pathogens.. We know that it will probably happen, but we don't know when, where, or how it will be,” says Nogales.. “If it reached humans it would lose virulence, but it would cause many victims,” he acknowledges and emphasizes that “the zoonotic risk is high.”

“It is not known whether avian influenza viruses and other zoonotic influenza viruses currently circulating will give rise to a pandemic in the future,” says the WHO.. “Given the diversity of avian influenza viruses and others that have caused human infections, it is necessary to maintain constant surveillance in both animal and human populations.”

No spread between farms

In any case, according to the latest report from the Health Alert and Emergencies Coordination Center, dependent on the Ministry of Health, “although the cases can be serious, the low capacity to transmit between people means that the risk is considered very low for the general population”. And he adds: “Likewise, the risk continues to be considered low for workers with occupational exposure on farms affected by sick animals.”. “The risk associated with the consumption of poultry meat or eggs is practically non-existent.”

For an avian influenza epidemic to occur in the world, there would have to have been continuous infections in mammals, something that does not even happen among poultry farms thanks to the surveillance programs already mentioned.. “The good thing that is happening is that there has been very little transmission between farms. When there is a case, strict biosafety protocols are applied and it is controlled and avoided, otherwise the sector could be greatly damaged economically,” explains Álvarez.

According to data from the Health Alert and Emergencies Coordination Center, of the 868 infections in people in the world in 21 countries, 457 have ended in death and “the fatality of the cases of avian flu detected so far amounts to 53%”, although they reiterate that “major outbreaks occur occasionally.”

The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, traveled to Beijing last week. There he met with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, within the framework of the Third Forum of the New Silk Roads, where there were delegates from 130 States.. This is Xi's star project, with which China seeks to seduce what it calls the Global South, with multi-million dollar investment projects.

Xi and Putin met at the People's Palace, on the sidelines of the forum. The news agencies that covered the meeting of the two leaders say that the “common threats” in the world “strengthen” their relations and praised the “growing mutual trust.” Regardless of what has been said, what has been seen.

After that meeting, the video cameras of the official Russian agency RIA Novosti that day captured the Russian president accompanied by two uniformed Russian naval officers carrying the nuclear briefcase, which would be used to order a nuclear attack.. Those officers are in charge of carrying it, each one with a briefcase.

“There are certain suitcases without which no Putin trip is complete,” the state news agency's Kremlin correspondents said in a Telegram post accompanying the images.. That suitcase, actually suitcases, is known as Cheget and takes its name from a mountain in the Russian region of Kabardino Balkaria.

A briefcase that is three

The nuclear button is not in a drawer in the Russian president's office in the Kremlin but travels with him. There are three briefcases (one original and two copies). In case he decided on an attack with nuclear warheads, Putin would have access to one briefcase (the original), the defense minister to another and the chief of staff to a third.

Technically, the Russian nuclear briefcase allows access to Kavkaz, a telecommunications system created for nuclear emergencies. Kavkaz connects with Kazbek, a system that communicates with the military officials in charge of carrying out the order. All codes, those of Kavkaz and those of Kazbek, are transmitted encrypted.

The fundamental Cheget is that of the president: if it is not connected, the attack order does not become real because the system does not work. From this it can be deduced that Putin, alone, can give the order to launch an attack with nuclear weapons, but the other two holders of a briefcase (the two copies) cannot do so.

Five steps to press the button

There are five steps that would have to be taken in the event that Moscow decided to press the fateful button, according to The Sun newspaper last year:

The briefcase was activated once in 1995

The Cheget was developed in the early 1980s and was put into service just as Mikhail Gorbachev took office as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR in March 1985.. We know that it was activated on January 25, 1995, in the presence of a Norwegian rocket that was misidentified (in reality it was a sounding rocket launched by Norwegian and American scientists).. It was supposedly the only time the Cheget was activated.

The briefcase gives Putin access to the Russian nuclear arsenal, which is officially made up of 1,588 deployed warheads. However, the figure would reach 6,000 taking into account the warheads stored, those not deployed and those that are going to be dismantled.. According to the UN, there are currently 13,080 nuclear weapons on the planet and 90% are from the United States and Russia.

Does Xi Jinping have a nuclear briefcase?

As far as is known, China has at least 350 nuclear warheads. Therefore, it is possible that Xi Jinping also had his briefcase nearby during his meeting with Putin.. O no. Much is assumed and little is known about China's nuclear weapons system.

Apparently the Chinese system is not so orthodox and depends more on the human factor, that is, a face to face based on the scale of power. The main authority resides in the president of the Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party (CMC), a position that is usually held by the general secretary of the Communist Party and president of the Republic, as is the case with Xi.

In any case, China's nuclear doctrine is no first use (NFU).. It refers to its commitment not to use nuclear weapons as a means of war unless it receives a nuclear attack from another country.. For this reason, China's nuclear system does not prioritize rapid response as much as the survival of the response system.

With the world watching the Israeli bombings in Gaza and the borderline humanitarian situation of the Strip's civilians, another Palestinian region is currently on alert for increasing violence.. The Hamas attack at the beginning of October has made the West Bank a target for Israel, which considers that these territories have become a “terrorist haven.” In these three weeks the conflict has reached its highest levels since the Second Intifada, but the situation of tension between Palestinians and Israelis comes from behind.. In the last year, settler violence, raids by Israeli forces in refugee camps and the radicalization of Palestinian society have turned the region into an explosive cocktail that could explode at any moment.

In the early hours of this Friday at least four people were killed and another 15 were injured in raids by the Israeli Army in different parts of the occupied West Bank.. Since the war between Israel and Hamas began, more than 100 Palestinians have died in this region (including 31 children, according to Doctors Without Borders) and nearly 2,000 have been injured.. Additionally, 1,000 Palestinians have been detained, including about 500 allegedly linked to Hamas, according to Israel.. During this period, unprecedented situations have been experienced in recent years, such as the bombing of the Jenin mosque, something that frequently occurs in Gaza but does not usually occur in the West Bank.

“We are facing a very dangerous situation that could end up exploding,” Moussa Bourekba, principal investigator at CIDOB (Barcelona Center for International Affairs), told 20minutos.. “The Hamas attacks could encourage certain people to believe that violence is the only way out because non-violence has so far brought little results,” says Bourekba, adding that although not all Palestinians are in favor of the actions of Hamas, it is precisely this lack of prospect of peace or improvement of their situation that could “push or make more attractive the violent offer as a solution to remedy this problem.”

An increasingly radicalized society?

This whole situation comes in the middle of a political confrontation between Palestinians for control of the cause. The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has not called elections for almost two decades, fearing that, as happened then, Hamas could win the elections. The president of the ANP, Mahmud Abbas, has become a schism within the young Palestinian society, disconnected with the leadership of the octogenarian president. “Many times the Palestinians have pointed out that they are experiencing a double occupation: by Israel and by their Government, which, especially on security issues, collaborates with Israel in the West Bank,” Natàlia Queralt, an analyst at El Orden, tells this medium. World.

Abbas's loss of legitimacy has caused an internal clash in the West Bank, where there has been a radicalization of the population, who see how the peace processes have not changed their reality.. This year marks thirty years since the Oslo Accords, which not only have not changed anything, but, considering the number of Israeli settlements, it has gotten worse.

Since 2017, attacks against Israeli citizens have increased, some of them by followers of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad or the Al Qasam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas.. The last of them occurred last July when a Palestinian ran over several pedestrians and stabbed others with a knife in Tel Aviv.

Added to this is the appearance of armed groups. In the last year, the Tulkarem Brigade has emerged, which brings together several militias made up of young people from the Nur Shams refugee camp.. But it's not the only one. Another case that has received extensive media coverage is that of the so-called Lions' Den, who appeared on social media patrolling the streets of Nablus a year ago and have already had clashes with Israeli forces. Some of these armed groups are not affiliated with political parties, which demonstrates the disagreement between young people and the Palestinian political class.

Clashes with settlers and more settlements

That clashes between the Israeli Armed Forces and the West Bank have increased for months is no coincidence. “The current far-right government is openly racist, anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian and promotes the occupation of territories. Their intention is to annex the West Bank and culminate with the idea of a greater Israel,” says Queralt. Both analysts agree, however, that this is a policy that has been carried out by all Israeli governments, both left and right, with the objective of “reducing the Palestinian territory as much as possible and making the two-party solution States is unviable”.

What has changed with this new Government is the power of the settlers, thus multiplying assaults and violence.. In fact, this week the president of the United States, Joe Biden, said he was “alarmed” by the fact that some “extremist settlers” are attacking Palestinians in the West Bank.. “They are attacking them in places where they have the right to be. They have to stop, be accountable and stop now,” said the president.

That is the conclusion also reached by the UN Human Rights Council.. In a report published in May 2021, they stated that “the Israeli authorities are committing the majority of violations as part of the Israeli Government's objective to consolidate its permanent occupation at the expense of the rights of the Palestinian people.”

At the end of 2022, organizations such as Jewish Power and Religious Zionism came to power, led by settlers who in the 1980s belonged to marginalized formations within the Knesset (Israeli Parliament).. “Years ago, the positions that we now see in the Government were repudiated and considered too extremist and radicalized to have representation in Parliament,” recalls the El Orden Mundial analyst. “In the current context it seems that tolerance for hate speech and violence has decreased. For Israeli settlers it is a dream that their leaders are now at the head of the Government with positions of responsibility,” he adds.

The UN Security Council itself declared in February of this year that it was “concerned” by the Israeli Government's announcement to continue “the construction and expansion of settlements.”. For Bourekba, in the eyes of the settlers who “have already expelled dozens of Palestinians from their homes,” this moment of open conflict is also an opportunity to continue along this line, by equating all Palestinians in the West Bank with Hamas and, therefore, So much so, with terrorists.

Can the same thing happen in the West Bank as in Gaza?

Imagining a situation in the West Bank similar to that of Gaza, with continuous bombing and a ground operation about to begin, is still complicated.. The reality is very different in both territories. Gaza has been under a blockade for 15 years and is under the government of the Islamist organization Hamas, which after the attacks of October 7 has been shown to be less controlled by Israel than the Jewish State believed.

On the other hand, in the West Bank the Israeli Army carries out raids from time to time, as has happened in recent weeks in refugee camps.. Control is much greater in this territory. And, although popular uprisings may occur, the ability to organize as Hamas has done in Gaza is complicated by the very characteristics of the West Bank, which does not have territorial continuity due to the Israeli occupation.. However, “what happens in Gaza has an effect in the West Bank,” since, as the analyst clarifies, “there is a shared feeling of desperation.”. “They are two different realities, but it is the same town,” he adds.

Although knowing the degree of support that Hamas has in the West Bank is complicated, the truth is that the problem would not end with the total or partial elimination of this group. “Even if Israel ends Hamas, other movements will emerge to take its place. There is a fundamental problem here… and it is political,” says Queralt.